Fired
Pizza Hut waited for the controversy to die down then fired A pizza delivery driver, who police said defended himself by shooting a robber who attacked him
No more Pizza Hut for me.
Update: Tom says don’t eat their pizza because it’s crappy pizza.
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:57 pm
I don’t know of any pizza chain that allows their drivers to carry.
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:13 pm
They did the same thing with a guy in Ohio back in 2004, so this is no surprise at all.
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Uncle, discussed this last night in an adult ed college class, in Des Moines. The mostly female, liberal group thought Pizza Hut was right, for all the stupid reasons unarmed people usually do. Too dangerous, why did he have to shoot multiple times, etc, etc. But here’s the strange part. They all agreed that if the crook has shot and killed an unarmed Pizza Hut delivery driver, the driver’s family should sue Pizza Hut because the driver was not protected. I think those folks could actually convince themselves that 2 + 2 really does equal Blue, to paraphrase Net Flics.
April 23rd, 2008 at 3:11 pm
No change for me, Their Pizza Sucks anyway.
I’m not a huge fan of Taco Bell or KFC either….
April 23rd, 2008 at 3:49 pm
This puts you one step closer to the compound, I guess…
April 23rd, 2008 at 3:50 pm
By the way, I stopped eating Pizza Hut about 15 years ago, largely because they started sucking. Nothing to do with corporate politics. There are frozen pizzas better than Pizza Hut pizza…
April 23rd, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Pizza delivery guys are doing God’s Work. They ought to be immune from traffic laws AND be able to carry ANY arm, NFA or otherwise. A pox on the houses of those who assail them.
April 23rd, 2008 at 4:11 pm
i carried the entire time i worked for them… my logic was that i would rather be alive and unemployed than dead and still have a job…
i knew that if i ever had to defend myself, i would be fired… but i did it anyways
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:45 pm
This puts you one step closer to the compound, I guess…
Heh, boy that hits close to home.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Just to be clear I was referring to myself.
My landlord won’t even come into the apartment if I’m home unless I answer the door. He’s seen the gun chests and isn’t really worried, but isn’t taking any chances.
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Uh, isn’t that how it should be? Landlord or no, walking into someone’s place of residence without knocking first is generally considered a big faux pas.
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:26 pm
As far as delivered pizza goes, I like Pizza Hut more than any other chain I’ve tried, and most local shops.
I haven’t tried that many brands of frozen pizza, cause most of the time when I want pizza, I don’t feel like going to the store to get something. 😉
So… show me a pizza place that lets their drivers carry, and I’ll send some of my business their way. I don’t know of any shops with such a policy, so I guess the main factor is going to have to be taste.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:27 pm
They’d have fired you anyway for being late.
So to speak.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:42 pm
If (God forbid) I were to deliver pizza for a living, I’d carry. As others have said – I’d rather be alive and unemployed.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:42 pm
I was informed upon moving into my new apartment that while they could not prevent people from owning guns (she gave me a lingering look that said she thought I might have one — I maintained my poker face), that they would absolutely not tolerate firearms being displayed or used on the premises.
I thought, and did not say, that if I had to use a firearm in my apartment, the last thing I’d be worried about was what my freaking landlord thought about it.
Good for the pizza guy, defending himself. He should sue Pizza Hut for placing him in a situation where his life was in danger.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:45 pm
A lot of convenience stores will fire an employee who pursues a robber outside the store.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:58 pm
I’ve been getting my Pizza at Costco lately. Pizza the Hut won’t get me back.
I’ll bet there’s some lawyers just dancing on their toes looking for a report of a Pizza Hut driver being injured or killed during a robbery. This incident hangs a big “Sue Me” sign on Pizza Hut corporate. Their pizza will have to get very expensive to pay the settlement.
Perhaps if it was so expensive they were forced to drop delivery entirely, the other players in the field (Domino’s et al) would just go along with the local CCW laws.
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:13 pm
The pizza companies are merely doing what the society wants, as expressed by the liability law. If they allow drivers to carry guns, then that is a corporate policy of allowance. They would be supporting the practice. Then, if a driver caused an injury with the gun, there would have a big lawsuit against them, which they would lose.
There is one comment above that people already think Pizza Hut should pay damages if a crook injures one of their employees! A jury would surely hold Pizza Hut responsible if their employee injured some innocent third party, or they couldn’t prove that the third party had threatened the employee.
Of course, they have to fire the employee, or some later lawsuit would claim that they condone their drivers carrying guns, even though they have a policy against it.
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:19 pm
I’m positive, positive that Sen. Obama (D-Buyer’s Remorse) will come out firmly on at least two sides of this issue.
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:33 pm
I hate to defend Pizza Hut at all here, but the policy for drivers has been in effect for decades, and they’ve fired drivers for the very same thing in the past. I don’t have to like it, but they ARE consistent.
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:42 pm
It is obviously a dangerous policy for Pizza Hut drivers/deliverers.
After all, the employer doesn’t care about several things – your life or your constitutional right to defend yourself.
On the other hand, they care about their profit level.
There’s only one word for that.
Greed.
After events such as these, why would anyone want to work for them?
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Let me offer a saner thought to the rants:
One word: safety. Most retail stores have a no confrontation policy about robbers. Allowing employees to confront usually results in dire consequences — for the employee. The chances the gun will be turned on the employee is far greater.
Who thinks it’s worth it to lose a life over a pizza and $20 in change?
Anyone? Anyone?
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Mark, you have fallen for that MSM false bit of made up statistics about guns being turned on the owner. It most cases, the criminals turn tail and run at the mere sight of a firearm. It’s rare that the law abiding citizen needs to actually fire. It’s almost unheard of for the criminal to attempt to take the gun.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:08 pm
So? Whoever said that being a prick the same way many times in a row makes you any less of a prick than you otherwise would have been?
No one, but if you’d bothered to read the story before commenting, you’d know that cops say his life was threatened. Maybe his life is only worth $20 to you, but I can scarcely blame the guy for valuing his own life a bit higher than that.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:11 pm
A lot of convenience stores will fire an employee who pursues a robber outside the store.
Which makes sense. If a robber has left a store and is no longer a threat to the employees and customers, there is no sense to continue to put you or anybody else in danger. Ain’t nothing stolen that can’t be replaced.
Now if you’re in a bad part of town delivering pizza pie at 10:30pm and somebody pulls a gun on you and you fear for your life…
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Well, Mark, have you shared your expertise with all your local law enforcement agencies? Have any of them disarmed their officers so they wouldn’t have their guns taken away and be killed with them?
If you have not yet done so, I encourage you to go in and talk to your police chief and sheriff and inform him of your plan to keep his officers safe.
As for the commenter who said Pizza Hut is consistent, so what? So am I? I don’t trade with people who are willing to be a silent participant in the murder of their employees for profit.
Being a prick as was stated above does not become more acceptable because one is prick a lot.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:38 pm
Oh yeah, mark. let us know how it works out after your meetings.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:38 pm
Mark,
I’m guessing that you have never delivered pizzas. Admittedly, during my time as a pizza driver most of our issues were resolved with our flashlights.
Personally, I never cared much about the $$ or the pizza, I cared much more about my own skin and my car. Oh, btw, when you do 4-5 pie runs you don’t have $20 on you, you have $80-200 on you until you can get back to the store and make a drop.
OTOH, the horsecrap about some goblin disarming you may have some validity if you believe that a firearm is a magic wand that dispells bad guys. However, if you have training and take the tool seriously as a tool the likelihood of some yahoo disarming you is reduced exponentially. Yes, it can be done, but typically the people who are able to do so don’t rob pizza drivers.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:52 am
After discovering the miracle of Dijourno (sp?) and learning to add my own addition to pizzas, delivery companies simply cannot compete – in terms of quality or cost. As such, Pizza Hut will not be gaining or losing business from me.
That said, as a legal neophyte, a question – if a company does not specifically make something against the rules, does that fall under “corporate allowance”? For example (and all analogies are flawed), if a company does not make suicide against the corporate rules, and someone goes out and offs themself, can their survivors hold the company liable?
Because, damn, that would just be stupid.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:08 am
Well it’s Papa John’s or Domino’s for me from now on. I don’t have any problem with the Pizza guy packing, heck I want the Deliverator himself to bring me my pizza. Something like a quarter of OTJ fatalities for Pizza deliverers are due to criminal violence (other 75% are mostly vehicle accidents).
April 24th, 2008 at 2:16 am
Armed delivery drivers opens them to all kinds of litigation. If they say it’s OK and an innocent bystander gets shot his relatives eat free pizza for the rest of their lives. If the felon sues they lose more money than the driver was carrying in court fees. I agree that I’d rather be alive and looking for a new job than dead and Employee of the Month, but that’s the way it is.
April 24th, 2008 at 4:03 am
It will probably take this guy like, 2 or 3 minutes to find another pizza delivery job.
When I ran a pizza delivery store we would often hire drivers to start immediately when they came in to fill out an application. Getting a driver who was experienced in the area was considered a bonanza- some of these guys/girls have their own flock of regulars.
April 24th, 2008 at 4:52 am
I drove for Pizza Hut when they first started by buying a bunch of Winchells donut shops and converting them into carry out/delivery stores. They had a “no weapons” policy then, too. Likely copied from Dominoes, who also has a “no weapons” policy at the time, and still does.
Nobody should be surprised the guy got fired.
April 24th, 2008 at 5:53 am
I will not be visiting a Pizza Hut Restaurant (except to tell them I why I will not be doing business with them) or calling them (except to tell them why I will not be doing business with them) to order takeout.
The only way to prevent me from carrying anywhere is to search me. America would be a safer place if the 70 million plus who do own firearms had the same attitude. They can’t lock all of us up.
April 24th, 2008 at 6:03 am
Our family hates Pizza Hut anyway (I’m in upstate NY which means excellent pizza on every street) but this is one more reason NOT to patronize them.
I’m starting to think EVERYONE should carry. And I don’t own a gun.
April 24th, 2008 at 6:50 am
I am for the right to carry, but it seems to me that Pizza Hut is well within its rights to prohibit its employees from carrying while working. No one HAS to work for them and the guy knew the policy when he took the job. He made a decision to carry and it paid off because he is alive. Good on him. He lost his job but he is alive to find another one.
April 24th, 2008 at 6:56 am
I quit patronizing Pizza Hut – both in store and takeout – several years ago after a similiar incident. For like reasons, I avoid 7-11’s as much as humanly possible when I’m in the states. Don’t care to do business with someone who puts risk avoidance ahead of their employees’ lives.
April 24th, 2008 at 6:56 am
“Perhaps if it was so expensive they were forced to drop delivery entirely, the other players in the field (Domino’s et al) would just go along with the local CCW laws.”
In Washington, DC, a pizza chain (I think it was Dominoes) was sued for not delivering to less savoury areas (Racial discrimination). DC has, if not the toughest, one of the toughest gun laws in the nation.
April 24th, 2008 at 7:13 am
Interesting that you assume that the only thing they want is the pizza and $20. Tell that to this guy.
I’m betting he wasn’t a co-conspirator. Usually Co-conspirators don’t strap live bombs around their own necks.
April 24th, 2008 at 8:55 am
In my college days in the late 80s I worked as a driver for Domino’s plus a regional chain. Back then, I’d guess about 25% of the drivers carried. Being a liberal moonbat at the time, I was horrified (today if I was a driver, I’d DEFINITELY carry).
It was only later that I realized that it was mostly the older, more experienced drivers who carried, and two of the ones I knew who were more-or-less “lifers” had installed custom hidey-holes in thier cars that would pop the gun out, grip first, at the press of a button. Those dudes only needed about half a second and they were ready to fire.
Note: I do recall three or four times out of four years in a mid-sized college town where somebody carrying scared away would-be robbers by brandishing. Nobody ever had to fire. There were three times as many or so who were unarmed and simply gave up their moneybag & pizza.
If they were all carrying and all brandished upon confrontation, I wonder how long the bad guys would continue to attempt to hold them up?
April 24th, 2008 at 10:38 am
larry weeks:
Did you suggest they head down to the SE side of Des Moines at night, alone, unarmed, with a big flashing “I have money” sign on their car, and see what happens?
April 24th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Daniel Said:
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:42 pm
After all, the employer doesn’t care about several things – your life or your constitutional right to defend yourself.
On the other hand, they care about their profit level.
There’s only one word for that.
Greed.
Daniel, it’s not only about greed, it’s about nuthouse lawsuits and juries that award millions of dollars. Let me hit YOU with a frivolous million dollar lawsuit and see how you’d react.
Because of the lawsuit threat, Pizza Hut had to fire him. I’m still boycotting them, because they could have found a way to take care of the fellow anyway. The lawsuits force the firing, not the need to f’ the young man over.
The deliveryman defended himself, and he is alive. Hurrah for him! Pizza Hut: blech. They can go bake themselves. But until lawsuit abuse is reined in, we are ALL at risk.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Hey … the worst thing they could have done to him would have been to let him keep his job.
At least this way, he can do something with his life other than being a pizza-boi.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
The pizza companies are merely doing what the society wants, as expressed by the liability law.
You must be joking. That’s like saying the top income tax reate is “merely doing what society wants”
April 24th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
One word: safety. Most retail stores have a no confrontation policy about robbers. Allowing employees to confront usually results in dire consequences — for the employee. The chances the gun will be turned on the employee is far greater.
Who thinks it’s worth it to lose a life over a pizza and $20 in change?
Hilarious.
Um, how then do you explain this?
That is in an “upscale” section of DC.
People like you simply don’t live in reality.
April 24th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
i know this much, every single time i got into a somewhat hairy situation while delivering, i could see it comming a mile away… generally something just wasnt right… people looking at you funny, a light burned out in a hallway, a car parked the wrong way… i personally only had two problems in the 6+ years that i delivered… one was when a 13 year old girl fired a hunting slingshot at my car… she was later arrested and charged with a felony… and the other time was when 2 gang bangers approached me in a hotel parking lot at about 2:45am… all it took was for me to draw and rack the slide on my .380 for them to decide that i wasnt worth the trouble…
that said, i know many guys that were robbed, beaten, had their wallets and cars stolen etc… the worst part about getting robbed is not loosing the pizza and the $$… but it is knowing that the robbers now have your ID and your address… and if they were willing to rob you in public, what might they be willing to do if they come visit your house?
April 24th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Yet another reason for me to continue patronizing Papa Murphy’s for some great take-and-bake pizza.
And converting a Winchells into a Pizza Hut is a major step down in quality.
April 25th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
I’ve delivered pizzas for the dominant chain, and frankly I was more afraid of my co-workers than any goblin. Several drivers were drunk or stoned on duty, had extremely bad tempers, barely literate, often ex-cons, etc. Most of the other drivers carried some kind of weapon since we delivered in very bad parts of town. The inevitable result was lots of fights amongst the employees, not to mention altercations with customers.
When I managed the store briefly before returning to professional employment, I inspected each driver’s car every night. Those that had weapons went home and were off schedule for two weeks. I also called the spouses/parents/probation officers and explained things to them.
Pizza Hut was absolutely correct in firing the driver, but they should have done it immediately, and pushed for prosecution of the driver for murder. The self defense claim is frankly BULLSHIT! Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
April 25th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Are you retarded?
The police disagree. And they have not charged him.
I guess you are retarded.